Remorse

Chapter Six: Doubts

Remus heard the familiar crash of footsteps that signaled the arrival of one of the senior members of the Lyceum. Whoever it was, they weren’t being subtle about their arrival. He steeled himself for the possibility that it might be Fenrir himself.

He Transfigured his stock of contraband Wolfsbane into rainwater and looked outside of the cabin to see who his visitor was. An enormous figure was approaching with a pink umbrella in one hand, a crossbow in the other, and a bundle of blankets under one arm. The boarhound trotting beside him had an incongruous-looking barrel around his neck.

“Hagrid!” exclaimed Remus. “What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m rescuing yeh.”

“But I don’t want rescuing,” said Remus, bemused, as Fang greeted him with a great deal of noise and slobber. “I’m all right.”

“Well, that’s more’n the Order knows when we’ve not heard a word from yeh in the better part o’ two months.”

“Oh.” He realized, uncomfortably, that Hagrid was right. “I’m sorry. It’s just that – well, a lot of things have been happening – Oh, hell, you’d better come indoors before anybody spots you, and I’ll try to explain.”

The cabin was so small that Hagrid got stuck on the way in, and Remus had to use an Engorgement Charm on the door frame. The doorway gaped, letting in the chilly autumn wind; he could only hope he’d be able to get it back to normal.

“Brought yeh a few things,” said Hagrid, reaching into his pocket and dropping a packet of sausages onto the tree stump that served Remus as a table. They were good sausages, from the Hogwarts kitchens, although Remus was hungry enough to eat Hagrid’s homemade ones. He hadn’t eaten meat in ages. One of the Lyceum’s officers had presented him with a bloody and strange-looking joint a few days after the last full moon, but he had buried it under a yew tree after darkness fell.

“Thank you, Hagrid.”

Hagrid was looking at him with an unexpectedly shrewd expression. “Do yeh min’ the time when yeh hadn’ been at school but two weeks, an’ yeh ran away into the Forest because yeh’d had yer first quarrel with yer friends, and yeh didn’ think yeh were ever goin’ to make up?”

“What? Oh yes, I do remember. You came and fetched me and wrapped me up in your overcoat. It was a good thing you found me before night came on.” Remus frowned slightly. “What made you think of it?”

“Jus’ this. Yeh said yeh didn’ want rescuing then either.”

“Really, Hagrid, I’m all right. I know how to look after myself, and the others have accepted me as one of their own. But if I keep sending messages out and having visitors from the Order, I’m going to risk making them suspicious.”

“So yeh’re hiding out, then,” said Hagrid, “and yeh don’t want any of us to disturb you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Fair enough if yeh are. Jus’ so yeh remember that we’re not hiding out from you. Molly’s expecting yeh fer Christmas, by the way, an’ she won’ take no fer an answer.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea –” Remus began, and then Fang licked him on the hand and he felt a pang of a hunger that went far deeper than his need for food. “Right,” he said. “Tell her I’ll be there.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Tonks was having a bad week of it. Dawlish hadn’t been pleased with her failure to apprehend Dung Fletcher or prevent one of the girls from the school from having a run-in with a cursed necklace, and had put her in charge of the Hogsmeade office’s paperwork. It was like being a glorified secretary. Besides, her woollen Auror’s robes were itching like crazy. She wasn’t wearing any underwear because she’d hung it out to dry in the back room of the Hog’s Head, and Aberforth Dumbledore’s favorite goat, Phoebe, had eaten it. (Aberforth explained fondly that she was pregnant and experiencing unusual cravings, although considering that she was a goat, Tonks wasn’t sure how he could tell unusual cravings from normal ones. Still, she supposed it was good to know that Phoebe’s sex life definitely involved a male goat and not Aberforth.)

Ben Savage popped his head into the broom closet that served her as an office. “Tight-Arse wants to see you after your shift,” he said.

“Again?” Tonks groaned. “What does he want this time?”

“Dunno, but I wouldn’t be in your shoes for anything.”

“Thanks, Ben, that fills me with a real spirit of optimism.” She wondered what real or imagined offense Dawlish would rake up to chastize her with this time. Inattention, most likely. Well, her dearest friend was somewhere in the Forbidden Forest with a mad werewolf, if he was alive at all, and she’d have to be made of stone to have her mind on her work one hundred percent of the time.

She was startled when Dawlish asked her, “Do you know a man named Stanley Shunpike?”

“Er, yes. He was a couple of years behind me at school. He’s a bus driver.” Her mind raced. Was Dawlish going to demand to know why she had been escorting Harry Potter back to school on the Knight Bus, nearly a year ago? Surely that should be obvious now.

“He was a bus driver.” A twisted smile played around Dawlish’s lips.

“Oh no, what’s happened to him?” (Tonks recalled that she’d been a bundle of nerves when she last saw Stan in January, and rather hard on him. She regretted that.)

“Azkaban’s what’s happened to him. He was arrested three days ago on charges of collusion with the Death Eaters.”

“What, little Stan?” She wondered for a moment if this could be Dawlish’s idea of a joke, but it seemed unlikely. “What’s the evidence?”

“He copped to it. We’ve got a couple of girls who heard him boasting about it in a pub as witnesses, but we probably can’t make it stick before the Wizengamot without an official confession. The interrogators at Azkaban haven’t been able to get anything out of him, so they’ve sent for you. They suggested that if you Metamorphosed into one of the girls –”

“I can’t,” said Tonks sharply, grateful for once that her powers had failed her. It saved from having to say I will not. There wouldn’t be any going back from that, and Moody was right; it wasn’t time to sink the boat.

“Yes, I know. Fat lot of use you’ve been to us lately. But you’re a girl, anyway.” Dawlish eyed her limp brown hair with distaste, as though he were not entirely sure of this. “And he’ll trust someone he knows from school more than a stranger. Go and make nice and see what you can get out of him.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

“I don’t know nuffink,” Stan insisted. He must be twenty-one or twenty-two by now, but he looked like more of a kid than ever, his face milk-white against the damp and mossy walls. “‘Choo really think I woulda talked about it if I knew? The Death Eaters kill anyone that talks about them. I’ve ‘eard the stories.”

“Then why did you try to make it sound like you did? What were you thinking?” (This wasn’t exactly the soft tone Dawlish had told her to take; she sounded more like a bossy older sister scolding her little brother – but here in the chill light of the prison, she found it impossible to blandish or deceive. You couldn’t very well flirt with a man across iron bars, and the thought of what she had been asked to do made her feel slightly sick.)

He gulped. “I – I wasn’t. It was only a bit of a laugh, like. This other bloke told ‘em ‘e wor personal assistant to the Minister for Magic, an’ I ‘ad to say somefink to top that.”

“Do you think being a Death Eater is glamorous, then?”

“Nah. I wouldn’t be one o’ them for anyfink. It was only a game.” He shook his head, near tears. “Just a stupid game. You believe me, don’choo?”

“I believe you.”

“Then please ‘elp me. You gotta ‘elp me.” She could hear the panic in his voice. “I been ‘ere three days, an’ this place ain’t fit for man nor beast to rot in.”

“I know.” Instinct made her give him her hand, and he clung to it like a drowning man.

 

                                                            *          *          *

“The kid’s innocent,” she said when she was back in Hogsmeade.

“That’s a matter of opinion, and opinions don’t go in the report,” said Dawlish. “We are Aurors and we deal in facts. The only fact I see here is that you failed to get a confession out of him.”

“The truth is that he’s innocent. Give me leave to talk to Robards.”

“No. You’ve been to the London office twice this month already, and you’ve gone outside the chain of command and questioned my judgment both times. I’m not having any more of it. You’re not to leave Hogsmeade.”

“Fine,” she said. “But if I can’t go to Robards, I’ll go to Dumbledore.”

“You can go to hell for all I care, just don’t get me in trouble with my superiors.”

Tonks stomped off to write to Dumbledore and wondered, not for the first time, just why she had chosen a career in the Ministry.

 

                                                            *          *          *

The promise of three days of civilized life at Christmas was all that kept Remus going as winter settled in, and he was grateful to Hagrid for extracting it. The first evening at the Burrow was pure animal bliss: a proper bath, a hot meal, freedom from constant low-key fear. He tried to make small talk with Molly in the kitchen, but waves of sleepiness kept washing over him, and it was rather a relief when she ordered him to bed. He realized for the first time how much of a physical toll so many weeks of living rough had taken on him.

It was on the second day, Christmas Eve, that he began to feel as if he were a ghost returned from the dead. The Weasleys’ easy chatter and laughter seemed too loud and dangerously unguarded, and being among people who could afford to think of paper chains and Christmas wireless broadcasts felt a little unreal. He wondered if he had been right to come; he couldn’t be very cheerful company. Arthur and Molly kept shooting him worried looks, but the rest of them – the young lovers curled in one another’s arms, the teenagers having a noisy game of Exploding Snap – hardly seemed to notice his presence.

The cozy domesticity of the Burrow only reminded him that Tonks had offered him a chance at a very different life, and he had refused. He had wondered if he would see her at Christmas, but he realized now that this was a foolish hope. She must be busy at work, and, of course, she didn’t have to avoid her own family to keep them safe.

He felt like he’d brought the chill of the Forbidden Forest with him, and he moved closer to the flickering flames, trying to shake it off. He had a sudden urge to confess everything – to say I am not the friend who left you, I am a killer, a murderer – but of course one didn’t say things like that at a family Christmas party. What was he thinking?

He became aware that Arthur and Harry were talking about Snape and his loyalties. He felt a traitorous prickle of fear, which he instantly suppressed.

“It isn’t our business to know,” he said, turning and looking Harry full in the face. “It’s Dumbledore’s business. Dumbledore trusts Severus, and that ought to be good enough for all of us.”

And if it isn’t? If he’s sent you into hell on a fool’s errand ...?

Shut up!

“But just say – just say Dumbledore’s wrong about Snape –”

“People have said it,” said Remus, remembering the tense Order meeting a few months earlier, “many times. It comes down to whether or not you trust Dumbledore’s judgment. I do; therefore I trust Snape.”

“But Dumbledore can make mistakes,” Harry persisted. At sixteen his voice was still piercing. “He says it himself. And you – do you honestly like Snape?” His eyes were uncomfortably bright as he looked Remus in the face.

“I neither like nor dislike Severus,” said Remus slowly, trying to convince himself. “We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps; after all that happened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usually do at the full moon.” There: that was something. The last batch of Wolfsbane he’d bought from his supplier in Knockturn Alley had left him deathly ill for three days after the full moon. If he wanted proof that Dumbledore’s trust was well placed, he could look farther and do worse.

He was relieved that Harry made only a few more attempts to argue, and then changed the subject. “What have you been up to lately?”

Intellectually, he knew that it would be more prudent to evade the question, but he hesitated only a moment before answering. Let men like Snape pile lies upon lies; Harry had suffered enough at the hands of well-intentioned adults who had tried to protect him from the truth.

Men like Snape? So you don’t trust him, do you?

Shut up, shut UP!

He heard himself referring to the Lyceans as “my fellows, my equals,” – it seemed to make sense, for he was as much a killer as they were – and then, because Harry didn’t know that, he had to explain himself. “Werewolves. Nearly all of them are on Voldemort’s side. Dumbledore wanted a spy and here I was ... ready-made.”

It was a bitter jest, and he hastened to cover it with a smile; but there was little sense in sugar-coating the truth about Greyback. Harry was old enough to know what manner of men they were up against, even if he was also young enough to leap to conclusions.

Still, the questions Harry had raised about Snape kept haunting him through the rest of the evening, despite his attempts to banish his doubts with a glass of eggnog and some reminiscences about James, a subject which normally restored him to good cheer. He had given his trust, implicit and unquestioning, to Dumbledore and the other members of the Order. They all had. If Dumbledore was mistaken – about Snape, or about any one of them – what was to become of the rest?

 

                                                            *          *          *

“Merry Christmas, Gawain.”

“Merry Christmas, Tonks.”

“What brings you in? There isn’t – anything wrong?” The Head Auror rarely visited the Hogsmeade office. Tonks felt the tight, fluttery feeling of fear settle in around her throat, as it did so often these days.

“Oh, no. I was just visiting my sister, who lives up this way, and I thought I’d have a look in.”

“On Christmas Eve? That’s dedicated of you.”

Robards hesitated for a moment. “Well, to tell you the truth, my sister’s a funny sort of witch. We do and we don’t get along, if you know what I mean. I’m fond of my nieces and nephew, but in the interest of peace and tranquility, it’s probably better if she and I don’t spend too much time talking politics after the kids have gone to bed.”

Tonks, who knew about all there was to know about complicated family situations, nodded and said no more.

“Anyway – Titus isn’t around, I suppose?”

“Nah, he’s got today and tomorrow off. Nobody here but us peons.”

“Not very nice for you, is it, working over Christmas?”

“I volunteered.” Dawlish’s method of soliciting volunteers was rather coercive, but she hadn’t really minded. She hadn’t anyplace to go except home, where her mother would fuss too much and ask too many questions, and The Burrow, which would be worse.

“Well, you look a bit blue. Care to come out for a quick drink?”

“Are you trying to get me sacked?”

“No,” said Robards, “that’s Dawlish’s department, not mine.”

She looked at him, astonished, and then laughed.

“I’ll take the responsibility if he finds out, which he won’t, and if anything should happen that requires our attention, we’ll hear it first in the Three Broomsticks anyway. To tell you the truth, I sometimes think it would be more efficient to move all of our offices to the pub, but Scrimgeour would never stand for it.” He gave her a conspiratorial wink. Well, she was learning all kinds of new things about Gawain Robards this evening. He had always seemed very precise – not exactly punctilious about the Ministry regulations, like Dawlish, but conscientious about his duties to the public – and this new streak of mischief came as a pleasant surprise. It almost reminded her of ...

No. She wasn’t going to think about him.

She put aside the report she was writing about the arrest of a man named Tarquin McTavish, who lived a few miles outside of Hogsmeade and had imprisoned a Muggle inside his kettle, and followed Gawain out into the frosty streets.

The lights of Hogsmeade were more subdued than they had been in years past, but a merry fire burned in the Three Broomsticks, and the pub was filled with the spicy scent of eggnog and mulled wine. Tonks ordered a mug of hot butterbeer, mindful that she was still on duty, and Robards a double firewhiskey.

“You know Dawlish wants me out of the department?” she asked when she had plucked up her courage.

“It’s obvious from his memos that he does. That’s why I thought I’d come out and have a look at you myself. I must say that you seem perfectly sane to me.”

“What did he say? Oh, never mind, I don’t want to know. Did you get my letter about Stan Shunpike?”

“I did. And after reviewing the interview transcripts, I am inclined to agree with you. I recommended to the Minister that he be released.”

“What do you think will come of it?”

Robards sighed. “I don’t know. I sometimes think the longer I work here, the less I know. Put it this way, I know Dumbledore’s interceded for him as well, and I have a feeling that will make things worse rather than better. I’m not privy to whatever happened between them last summer, but Rufus came away with his ego bruised, and he isn’t the sort of man who forgets that easily.”

Tonks ran her finger around the rim of her butterbeer and avoided meeting his eyes. So her letter to Dumbledore was more thing to feel guilty about. “Do you think – Gawain, you’ve been at this far longer than I have. Do you believe any of the work we do is worth doing, or are we just mucking around and making things worse?”

“I don’t know that either,” said Robards wearily. “Rosmerta, another Firewhiskey, please.”

“I’ll get this round.”

“No, my treat. Head Auror’s prerogative. Save your spare change for the collection.”

“What collection?”

“The department’s chipping in on a coming-of-age present for Amelia’s niece ... and I think we ought to get something for Frank and Alice’s boy as well. The others may have forgotten, but I can’t.”

“Oh. Give them this from me.” Tonks groped around in her pockets and handed Robards five Galleons. He looked slightly startled at the sum, but she hadn’t any need for it – and she had spent many afternoons sitting by Alice Longbottom’s bed when she lived in London.

“You must have talked to some of the kids while they’re in the village,” said Gawain. “Have you any idea what Susan and Neville might like?”

She shook her head. Remus would know, she thought. He made it his business to know these things about his students. Suddenly she missed him sorely and wished she had gone to Molly’s after all. But no, that wouldn’t have been any good – what she really missed was the easy friendship they had shared, and she couldn’t get that back. How stupid could she have been to ruin it?

Gawain drained his glass for the second time. “Chirk up, Auror. Everybody has doubts in their third or fourth year – after the idealism wears off, and before you come to take certain things for granted.”

“You don’t sound like you’re taking anything for granted.”

“I have taken a great many things for granted,” said Gawain wearily. “For more years than I care to remember.”